The Anatomy Of A New Sports Rivalry: Assessing Four Factors Driving The Intensity Of The LAFC, L.A. Galaxy Derby

Friday night offered more evidence to this effect.

In one of the more thrilling and intense regular-season live sporting events I've attended in decades, the L.A. Galaxy beat their cross-town rivals, LAFC, by a 3-2 score. Each team's star player and leading scorer (Zlatan Ibrahimovic for the Galaxy and Carlos Vela for LAFC) were the only goal scorers, adding to their 2019 stature as the top two goal scorers in Major League Soccer (Vela with 21 goals, Zlatan with 16).

Even more fascinating than Zlatan's hat-trick, however, is how quickly passions have escalated in this heated rivalry in less than 2 years.

For only the fourth meeting ever between the two sides (LAFC's inaugural season was 2018, where they played the Galaxy three times), the intensity at the match was off-the-charts electric...both from fans before and during the match, as well as players and coaches in-match.

You'd think this was a feud that was decades in the making.

Sports rivalries are good for business. They can drive ticket sales, food and beverage sales, and merchandise sales. They drive fan engagement on social meeting with additional tweets or Instagram posts, which often promote more fan intensity and loyalty. Rivalries enhance brand affinity, which typically goes hand-in-hand with enhancing the ability to monetize the brand.

But rivalries usually take time to form and blossom. As Helene Elliott from the L.A. Times wrote today, they can't be manufactured.

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